It is well known to cover surfaces, such as walkways, driveways, patios, floors, work surfaces, walls and other interior or exterior surfaces with stones, bricks, pavers, tiles and other architectural surface covering units. It is further known to construct walls and other structures with stone and bricks. Natural stone surface coverings and structures are constructed by cutting and fitting irregularly sized and shaped stones. The work requires a skilled stonemason to select, cut and fit the stone. It is labor intensive, and accordingly expensive. Custom built natural stone surfaces and structures, however, are very attractive and desirable.
Conventional surface coverings and structures are also constructed of manufactured pavers, bricks, tiles or other building units. Manufactured units are typically provided in geometric shapes, such as squares, rectangles and hexagons, or combinations thereof. Surfaces covered with manufactured units are typically laid in repeating patterns, which, in certain applications, may lack the desired visual interest.
Further, due to the shapes of certain conventional building units, they may be limited to a small number of applications. For example, it may be difficult to make a curved pathway or a tree ring out of square or rectangular units.
Another problem with such repeating patterns of many conventional surface coverings is that the units (i.e., the squares, rectangles and/or hexagons) within the surface covering can easily shift over time, such that adjacent units will end up being out of alignment with each other. The result is a surface covering that is intended to be based on a repeating pattern with a uniform look, but that includes one or more sections where the pattern is not followed due to such mis-alignments, thereby creating a disordered appearance.